Many of you are wondering if hookah is harmful to you and if so, to what extent? Is it more harmful than cigarettes, or much less?
You may have seen a few videos on the internet where they test hookah and compare it to cigarettes using a compressor and comparing the coloration of the cotton wool. In some tests, cigarettes are much more harmful, and in the really weird ones, hookah is much more harmful. So how is it?
Our opinion is that hookah, under the right conditions, is incomparably both less harmful and less addictive than cigarettes. But then how can it be that in some ‘tests’ hookah is even worse? To understand the whole issue, one must understand what hookah tobacco consists of, how it is “consumed” and also how these tests are done. Let’s break it down
What does hookah tobacco consist of?
Hookah tobacco is generally made up of 4 basic ingredients. For each, we’ll also talk about whether it can harm you, why and how much it can harm you
- Tobacco – Tobacco is a plant virtually like any other. It is a natural product and contains no harmful ingredients. Yes, tobacco contains nicotine. We haven’t forgotten that, don’t worry. But when you do a better research about nicotine, you will find that this substance is not harmful at all if not consumed in abnormal doses. On the contrary, it has stimulant-relaxant effects. This means that it will help remove stress from you, and improve your mood. So-called chill you out. What is negative about nicotine is that it is addictive. However, although we can’t explain it scientifically, hookah has never been, nor will it ever be, as addictive as cigarettes. Perhaps this is due to the very regular intervals of cigarette smoking, perhaps it is due to other substances in cigarettes that may be more addictive. But we’ve never seen a person who had actual withdrawals from hookah. When you quit smoking one day, e.g. leave a town where you used to go regularly for a hookah, you won’t remember it for months. You just won’t miss it.
- Molasses or honey – molasses is a sweet natural mixture from sugar cane that retains moisture well. It’s exactly the wet, slightly sticky component of tobacco that keeps your tobacco moist and improves its heat resistance.
- Glycerin – is a transparent, odourless oil with a sweet taste. It has a great ability to bind water and is therefore used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and some foods. In tobacco, it is used to increase heat resistance, add a sweet taste and produce a denser smoke. Glycerine is associated with negative effects due to the vape-forms in which it is contained. However, dare we say that the other 50-500 ingredients found in vape-blends are more harmful than glycerin itself.
- Flavour – both natural extracts and chemical extracts can be used in tobacco. In most cases, the better the tobacco, the better the flavour. Fortunately, Europe has very strict standards and guidelines that manufacturers have to follow. Therefore, there is little chance of them using harmful substances
It is already becoming apparent from this analysis that shisha tobacco will not be as harmful as it may seem, but let’s move on
How is smoke produced in a hookah?
It is important to understand that unlike cigarettes, hookah smoke is not created by burning the tobacco, but by heating it. We know this principle very well already with heated tobacco products such as Iqos or Glo. The only truly harmful substances are released from tobacco when it burns and not when it is heated. If you don’t smoke tobacco to the ground, but learn to put the hookah down when it stops tasting, its harmfulness is reduced many times over
Why are YouTube hookah harm tests unrealistic?
- The first reason why these harmfulness tests can turn out completely differently is that we don’t know what tobacco the experimenter has chosen. He could have chosen the cheapest tobacco from Egypt, which is made from complete waste and does not comply with any quality or health standards. Or he could have chosen a quality tobacco that contains some colouring, which happens regularly.
- The second reason is the unrealistic imitation of hookah consumption. As we have already said, tobacco as such, and that in the hookah, emits the most harmful substances only when it burns. When it is merely heated, it is much better. The average person takes longer breaks when smoking a hookah and, above all, often blows through the tobacco in the hookah to cool it down. Whereas in this test this compressor or vacuum cleaner goes nonstop. Thus the tobacco gets hotter and hotter and definitely has to be burnt to a char that one would never achieve.
- The discoloration of the cotton wool is absolutely not an indicator of harmfulness. Hookah contains only a few substances in it, and the vast majority of that is entirely natural. Such cigarettes are said to contain around 50 additional chemicals, and on top of that you are burning plastic and metal in it, which gets into your lungs, and you don’t notice this in the vape.
So what is our conclusion?
We are supremely confident that consuming quality hookah tobacco, with proper temperature control, is incomparably less harmful and addictive than smoking cigarettes. We cannot say definitively that it is not harmful at all, but we do not personally know a single person in the general vicinity who has had any serious problems from hookah smoking even after decades. We don’t even know of any problems, but we don’t want to mislead you
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